Highlights: Manny Ramirez’s Cutoff in the Outfield (patent pending) attempt in the third. Ramirez’s attempt at high socks were not about tailoring to the correct length below the knee like everyone else but rather gathering up the excess material and rubber banding it above the shin for a bishop sleeve affect. C’est très sportif! On a close call at home in the seventh, Ramirez represented the only Boston run of the evening.

How sad is it that all of the Red Sox’s offensive production fits in the highlight box?

Jeff Francis played on Red Sox fans’ paranoia over unfamiliar lefties. “Our team can’t hit against them! We look like a bunch of A-ballers against pitchers we don’t know!” goes the refrain.

But yet again the oft-repeated adage played itself out to the tune of a five-inning, six-strikeout showing by the junior twirler.

I still don’t get why Rockies field manager Clint Hurdle didn’t even bother to let Chris Iannetta have one at bat while his team was at Fenway. I hope Iannetta carries resentment over Hurdle’s lack of consideration, blossoms into the catcher he was projected to be, and replaces Jason Varitek when the veteran’s contract expires and he becomes Boston’s manager.

All that is hopefully in the future. The present is somewhat worrisome, but unlike Yankee fans we no longer dwell in the past. “Nineteen seventy-eight!” doesn’t roll trippingly off the tongue, does it?

I understand that much has been made to celebrate the 1967 Impossible Dream team this year. It’s partially Red Sox marketing-driven nostalgia but mostly a genuine recapturing of that season that brought the town so close to rapture.

The lineup last night featured J.D. Drew leading off. Given his OBP, this is a statistically sound decision, especially in light of the desperate pair that Coco Crisp and Julio Lugo make. Drew could have easily been the hero of the game rather than the goat if his line shot in the second wasn’t gloved by rookie Troy Tulowitzki. It was an especially memorable out because the bases were loaded with a single out and the futility twins Crisp and Lugo had reached on a base on balls and error respectively. To squander that rare occurrence as Drew and Dustin Pedroia did with his swinging strikeout set the tone for the evening.

Faced with the same circumstance in the top of the third slumping Colorado third baseman Garrett Atkins lofted Josh Beckett’s offering into the first row of the Monster seats. Home plate umpire James Hoye gave an assist to Atkins by calling what was clearly a curveball strike authored by Beckett as a ball.

The Red Sox look to turn their homestand around against the Giants. The franchise hasn’t visited Fenway since 1912, the year the park opened and the season when Boston celebrated its second world championship against the New York Giants. The team is currently last in its division but does feature the inimitable Dave Roberts on its roster.